Cody Bellinger gets MVP as Yankees shine bright in American League’s All-Star win
New York Post · RC · trust 44/100
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Add The New York Post on Google PHILADELPHIA — A 2019 NL MVP whose stock had more plunged than dropped in the years afterward, nontendered by the Dodgers and salary-dumped by the Cubs, returned to the All-Star Game for the first time in seven years transformed. No longer is he the 47-homer monster he was with the Dodgers. And no longer is he the .165-hitting shell of himself that he was in 2021.
Cody Bellinger is a different player, which was reflected in his first-inning at-bat.
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Cody Bellinger is a different person, which was reflected by his companions to the podium after the game: Caiden and Cy, his two young daughters and a significant reason Tuesday meant so much to him.
The reinvention of Bellinger already had been complete, but it was on display during the American League’s 4-0 victory at a sold-out, rocking, booing and Red, White and Blue’ing Citizens Bank Park, where a player who does just about everything well joined a club of Giancarlo Stanton, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter as Yankees All-Star Game MVPs.
“Pretty special,” Bellinger said after driving in half the game’s runs with one easy swing. “My first few years in the big leagues — I was here I think two of my first three years, and I was like, ‘I’ll be here every year.’
He got back, getting past nose-diving years with the Dodgers and merely solid seasons with the Cubs, by relying upon his athleticism and smarts more than his power. With the Yankees, he excels with two strikes, knows when to shorten up and knows when to unleash.
In Tuesday’s first inning, the AL had loaded the bases with two outs against Phillies southpaw Cristopher Sánchez, against whom lefties had hit .137 with a .328 OPS this season.
Bellinger went down, 0-2. He laid off a sinker and a changeup. And he got a sinker in the middle of the plate and shot it up the middle for a two-run single.
“I just tried to keep it simple,” said Bellinger, who could not have known at that moment that the AL wouldn’t need another run.
And yet they scored again one batter later, Ben Rice following it up with another left-on-left single against Sánchez.
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“Ben’s really just been doing it all year,” Bellinger said of Rice. “He’s such a good player. He’s really smart. He’s fun to talk hitting with.”
“I was so fired up for him,” Rice said of Bellinger, who dislocated his shoulder in the 2020 World Series, statistically was one of the worst players in the league in ’21 and not offered a contract by the Dodgers after ’22.
He landed with the Cubs and rebuilt his value but only partially, leading to the trade ahead of last season in which Chicago was on the hook for some of Bellinger’s salary.
With the Yankees, and particularly in a Yankee Stadium that suits him, a new Bellinger has emerged.
“It’s such a competitive league. It’s hard to be an All-Star,” Bellinger said. “The performance, it all has to come together.
“Honestly, this one, I just really enjoyed it.”
Two swings from Bellinger and Rice — “A couple knocks from the Yankee boys,” in the words of AL and Blue Jays manager John Schneider — represented the only scoring outside an eighth-inning homer from the White Sox’s Miguel Vargas. Eleven pitchers on the AL pitching staff combined for a three-hitter while walking two and striking out 15.
The game will be remembered for the pitching, Bellinger and the pageantry — enough to make theater directors blush. The league went to great lengths to celebrate both baseball and the United States, including through introductions in which players entered through giant Liberty Bells, then signed their names with quills on a lineup scroll that was styled like the Declaration of Independence, and that was before the mid-game fireworks display and seventh-inning, “Happy Birthday,” America singalong.
So it was only appropriate that the star of the All-Star Game was one of those Yankees from the north.
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